EXPANSIVE POETRY ONLINE
A Journal of Contemporary Arts 

 

  Joseph S. Salemi

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THE NPR/BBC GROUP
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POETRY
                  

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One of the commonest (and most misguided) ideas current in poetry circles today is the notion that the only worthwhile poetry is High and Noble and Serious and Deep. Everything else is just doggerel or—at best—merely “light verse.”

You encounter this notion largely among a certain sociopolitical class. It’s the cherished belief of those who make a fetish of “being responsible” and “caring about the world,” and who are annoyed at those who take a more easygoing and laid-back approach to life. It’s also the belief of those who are politically engaged, concerned about “burning issues,” and anxious to express their commitment to left-liberal pieties. You might call such people the NPR/BBC group.

For such types, a humorous or facetious poem (or even one that uses well-known stereotypes) is nothing short of a slap in the face. It offends their sense of dignity. How dare you waste our time with trivia? is their immediate reaction to any joke or squib or jeu d’esprit. These people feel that poetry has important work to do, and we all had better buckle down and start producing very significant and weighty poems that show how earnest we are about Discussing Things That Matter.

When one thinks about the vast number of excellent poems that are automatically excluded from the esteem of such people, one sees the canon of received texts drastically reduced. Thousands of poems have been written just for fun and playfulness, and make no especial intellectual demand on the reader. They do not preach, or teach, or advise, or exhort. They have no ambition to change the world or reform human relations. They are not philosophical or ideological. They are just delightful. One of the best poems in the English language is Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, and it is a defiantly non-serious work of ludic delight. Vast stretches of Lord Byron and Robert Burns are nothing but fun. Ogden Nash, Hilaire Belloc, Dorothy Parker, Edward Lear, Don Marquis, Richard Armour—need I enumerate the scores of top-notch poets who produced similarly cute and bubbly poems that make ample use of common notions and stereotypes for the sole purpose of entertainment? But the NPR/BBC crowd has a definite animus against such stuff, unless of course the poem in question can be read as supporting their ethical or political agenda.

What’s at work here? It’s good, old-fashioned Puritanism. Puritans dislike fun on principle. The Low-Church fanatics who suppressed the English theaters, Christmas festivities, and maypole dancing are still with us, though now they’ve dropped the religious excuse for their sourness and have become secular partisans for a world of narrow propriety, primness, and politically correct self-censorship. They are a thoroughly unpleasant bunch, filled with self-righteousness, angry about injustice, and grimly set on the reformation of all that is wrong with our planet. So quite naturally they dislike poems that are not proper and prim and politically correct. For them, such work is “puerile” or “facile” or “undemanding” or—their most damning judgment—“not serious.”

Compare them with the increasingly pushy and arrogant proponents of “health food.” All over America (most prominently here in New York and in California) there are very unpleasant types who are getting angrier and more aggressive about sugar, fats, cholesterol, soda, red meat, and a dozen other things that people like to consume. And they are becoming pushier and more outspoken every day. You shouldn’t be eating that! is a statement perfectly parallel to That sort of poetry is frivolous and undemanding! The same overweening presumption and high-mindedness motivate both.

The normal rhetorical procedure of such people is to promote a sense of shame in those poets who might be tempted to write in a light or playful style. They will sniff petulantly at your limerick or your spoof and say “You really could do much better than that, you know.” Or they will say “What you’ve written is cute, but does it actually challenge the reader?” as if a poem were a Pilates device for people to work out on. Or they will exhale a deep metaphysical sigh and comment “Oh well… I guess we’re not going to get any soul-shaking poems of profound and troubling insight from you.” In short, they’ll express a smug sense of superiority that is designed to make you feel bad about not writing for the ages.

My advice to anyone facing this sort of snot-nosed manipulation is as follows: tell its purveyors to drop dead. Remember that these poetic Puritans are really pursuing a surreptitious agenda that has nothing whatever to do with literature. They want to proselytize, and they want you to submit to their proselytizing by taking part in it—that is, by “writing serious poetry.” (Translation: poetry that makes the world safe for left-liberalism).

The dead giveaway as to the basic attitude of the NPR/BBC types is their reaction to non-humorous, non-light poetry that goes against their cherished ethical or political agenda. Such poetry sets their teeth on edge, and puts them into a deep rage. It’s also rhetorically inconvenient for them, since they can’t dismiss it as “light verse” or as “doggerel.” So they are forced to switch ground and attack this unorthodox poetry as unethical or tasteless or offensive or inappropriate. This latter term is one of their favorite expressions of disapproval, and the best way to answer it is to ask “Inappropriate for what or for whom?” Left-liberals with a pro forma commitment to “diversity” find it impossible to reply to that question, and it’s fun to watch them squirm when you ask it.

But in fact the best general policy you can pursue as a poet is to stay away from the NPR/BBC group as much as possible, and avoid discussing anything with them other than the mechanics
of verse composition. And remember this: deep down, America is still a frighteningly Puritan country. When the Pilgrims left Plymouth in 1620, one English aristocrat said “Would that the whole Crewe of puritanicall crop-head Dissenters had gone with them.” Unfortunately a great many stayed behind, and they screwed up England too.

 

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Joseph S. Salemi has published poems, translations, and scholarly articles in over one hundred journals throughout the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. His four collections of poetry are Formal Complaints and Nonsense Couplets, issued by Somers Rocks Press, Masquerade from Pivot Press, and The Lilacs on Good Friday from The New Formalist Press. He has translated poems from a wide range of Greek and Roman authors, including Catullus, Martial, Juvenal, Horace, Propertius, Ausonius, Theognis, and Philodemus. In addition, he has published extensive translations, with scholarly commentary and annotations, from Renaissance texts such as the Faunus poems of Pietro Bembo, The Facetiae of Poggio Bracciolini, and the Latin verse of Castiglione. He is a recipient of a Herbert Musurillo Scholarship, a Lane Cooper Fellowship, an N.E.H. Fellowship, and the 1993 Classical and Modern Literature Award. He is also a four-time finalist for the Howard Nemerov Prize.  His upcoming books, Gallery of Ethopaths, and a collection of critical essays, are forthcoming.

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